


Take the Win

by IJM



Category: General Hospital
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29029917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IJM/pseuds/IJM
Summary: Just another slice of life.
Relationships: Franco and Elizabeth Baldwin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Take the Win

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyn/gifts).



A crash upstairs caught Scott Baldwin’s attention. He bounded up the stairs and called his son’s name. “Franco! Are you okay?” he asked, making his way into the bedroom that Franco shared with his wife Elizabeth.

“In here,” Franco answered, punctuating the sentence with some curse words.

Scott pushed open the bathroom door and saw Franco, on the floor, trying to steady himself to stand. He reached down and gave him a hand so that he was on his feet again.

“Damn treatments,” Franco muttered. He was undergoing radiation treatment for a brain tumor and one of the many side effects was recurring dizziness. “Thanks, Pops.”

“Are you hurt?” Scott asked, his face pained with concern. He hated seeing his child so sick, especially since the cure was as bad as the disease.

“Getting used to hitting the floor, to be honest,” Franco answered. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Scott told him.

“I’m a grown ass man. I shouldn’t need my father to help me when I fall,” Franco grumbled.

“Well, I wasn’t around to help you when you were a kid, so let me have this,” Scott told his long-lost son. He felt such guilt about not being in Franco’s life from the beginning. Things would have been so different if he had just known that he had a kid out there.

“I do appreciate you,” Franco said, realizing what Scott was thinking.

“Maybe you should take Terry’s advice and use a walker.”

Franco glared at Scott, offended at the notion of needing a walker. “I’m not an invalid.”

“No one thinks you’re an invalid, but do you really want to risk a head injury on top of everything else going on with that noggin of yours?”

“I can’t,” Franco said, walking to his bed to sit down. Scott joined him. “I don’t want the boys to think I’m worse off than I am.”

“Newsflash—you’re not doing that great.”

Franco sighed.

Scott knew his son got his stubborn streak from him. He would have also recoiled at the idea of a walker. “At least you’ve still got your hair,” he offered, trying to break the tension.

“Priorities.” Franco said.

“Can I get you anything?” Scott asked.

“No, I just want to take a nap.” Another side effect of the treatment was draining fatigue.

“Then take a nap. I’ll be downstairs.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Evidence says otherwise,” Scott corrected him. “What happens when your next fall is down the stairs?”

“You’re such an optimist.”

“I’m a realist. And I’ll be downstairs, at least until that pretty wife of yours gets home.”

When Elizabeth got home, Scott was waiting in the kitchen. He had taken it upon himself to order pizza because he didn’t want Elizabeth to have to cook after a long day at work and he didn’t have the skills to do it himself.

Elizabeth greeted him with a hug. She and Scott had become much closer the past couple of years. They both understood the frustration that came with dealing with Franco sometimes. “Thanks for coming over today,” she said. “How did it go?”

Scott told her about the fall.

Her expression was worried. “And he acted like it’s nothing, right?” she said. He had fallen at least once a week ever since he started the treatments.

“He wants it to be nothing, so he acts like it’s nothing,” Scott summed it up.

Elizabeth sighed. There was a fine line between getting Franco to do what might be physically best for him and what might be emotionally crippling. He already felt like a burden because he couldn’t work or drive since he started radiation.

“Hey, we’ll get him—all of us will get through this,” Scott told her. “He’s too stubborn to die, you know.”

Elizabeth chuckled, her laughter trying to mask her very real fears that he wasn’t too stubborn to die. He had been oddly passive about his diagnosis and about fighting for his life until recently. Had he been in denial? She wasn’t sure. But she felt like she had to pound it into his head that he needed to be proactive in trying to salvage their life together.

“I sure hope Franco can eat this,” Scott said, motioning toward the boxes of pizza.

“Me too,” she agreed. Nausea had been yet another side effect of the radiation.

“I smell food,” Franco’s voice interrupted their conversation. Scott and Elizabeth saw him making his way down the stairs carefully. He held onto the railing, telling himself it was for _their_ benefit.

He strode at his normal pace to his wife and wrapped his arms around her, giving her a soft kiss on the forehead. “I missed you,” he told her. “How was work?”

“Felix is crushing on Lucas,” she answered, hoping some hospital gossip would cheer him up.

“Weren’t they a thing at one point?” he asked, letting her go. He distinctly remembered a conversation where he had encouraged Felix to go for the threesome Brad and Lucas were offering because—why not?

“I guess it’s complicated,” Elizabeth shrugged. “I also saw Britt and Jason go into an exam room again. I will find out what their secret meetings are about,” she declared.

“My little PI,” Franco smiled. “Britt and Jason,” he repeated. “Hmmm. That’s puzzling. I don’t see the connection.”

“Me either,” Elizabeth admitted. “Britt works for Cyrus. Jason works for… “ She paused. “Carly.”

“His one true love,” Franco added.

Elizabeth giggled. “That’s the damn truth.”

“So, about that food?” Franco looked to Scott. “I detect pizza.”

“Who’s the PI now?” Elizabeth asked, swatting his bottom as he turned around.

“Sit, sit,” Scott told his son. “I got one with everything, one with sausage, and one of those froo froo spinach, onion, and feta things.”

“I’ll take one of each,” Franco replied. He was hungry because he had not been able to eat much the first few days after his last treatment.

Scott and Elizabeth opened the boxes and Elizabeth placed the three requested slices on a dinner plate which she set in front of her husband.

“This is exactly what I needed,” Franco told them after taking a couple of bites. The gooey cheese, the sauce, the meat, the crispy crust… it was a little piece of heaven after three days of chicken broth and popsicles. He glanced at his watch. “Where are the boys?”

“There’s a basketball game at the high school this afternoon. Cameron agreed to take Jake and Aiden.”

“Oh, that’s fun,” he commented, glad that the boys were out doing something together, rather than tiptoeing around the house trying to be on their best behavior and thinking they were his caretakers when it was the other way around. “Aren’t you two going to eat?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Scott answered, grabbing a couple of slices of the everything pizza. He sat across from Franco. Elizabeth took the spinach pizza, partly because she liked it, and partly because she knew the boys would turn their noses up at the idea of spinach on a pizza. She was quite accustomed to putting all her boys first, even when it came to the most inconsequential things like slices of pizza.

“Terry called me before I came downstairs,” Franco said. He sounded nonchalant, as if he didn’t realize those words made his wife’s and his father’s heart stop for a moment. They were all too used to getting bad news.

“What did she say?” Elizabeth asked. She crossed her fingers under the table and said a quick prayer for positive news.

“The tumor shrunk, but not much.”

Elizabeth felt a wave of relief followed by hope. “That’s great! Why did you wait to tell us?”

Franco sighed and set his pizza down. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

“But, Franco, my hopes ARE up. They’re way up now. Don’t you understand, the tumor shrunk. You’re getting better. Even if it’s only a little at a time, it shrunk! Eventually it will go away. That’s why these treatments are so important.”

Franco’s eyes looked distraught. “What if it doesn’t?”

“You’re getting better, you, big dummy,” Scott told his son.

“Terry didn’t sound optimistic. She sounded… cautious.”

“Terry has to be cautious,” Elizabeth told him. “This is the best news.”

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Franco balked. “I don’t want you to get your heart broken again.”

Elizabeth let out a strangled growl. “Why don’t you understand? You’re supposed to tell me everything. You’re my husband. I’m your wife. We’re in this together. You don’t have to protect me from your medical condition. No offense, but I understand it a lot better than you do. You have to talk to me, Franco. You have to let me in. Why would you want to keep me from hoping?”

“Because I know how much you love me. I know it’s killing you that I’m dying—”

“You’re not dying,” Elizabeth corrected him.

“You just said you understand my condition.”

“Okay, fine, you could die. But you’re not going to. You’re young and otherwise healthy. And the radiation is showing promise. Don’t be so quick to give up. Why can’t you take this good news and be happy? Don’t be so dead set on this being the end for you.”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t deserve you or the boys. I don’t deserve to have my dad be there for me. This is all just temporary. I’ve had this moment of happiness, so I know what happiness is, but it has to end because I’m not worthy of it.”

“What about me? What about Cameron, Jake, and Aiden? What about how much we love you and how happy we are to be in this family with you? Do we deserve to have our happiness taken away?”

“Of course not.”

“Then get over yourself.”

Franco was stunned silent.

“I knew she was as smart as she is beautiful,” Scotty commented, breaking the staring contest between his son and daughter-in-law.

Franco looked at Scott, waiting for some advice or some words of wisdom.

“Take the win,” Scott said.

Franco nodded and reached out to Elizabeth. “I love you,” he told her. “I’m sorry I’m so self-centered.”

She shook her head. “Just learn your lesson, for the last time, okay. You share things with your wife. I don’t need you to protect me in your misguided way.”

“Deal.”

“Now, how about smiling for a change. You got good news. Like Scott said, take the win.”

\--END


End file.
